428 CELL, INTELLIGENCE THE CAUSE OF EVOLUTION 



foundation. There are hundreds of plants now known 

 which catch and devour insects with as much skill and 

 dexterity as man catches the larger animals. The com- 

 mon cell called the amoeba which lives in fresh water 

 ponds, and which most closely resembles the man build- 

 ing cells, is no fool. He looks simple but he is not any 

 more simple than a human being. He eats, drinks, 

 breathes and moves from place to place. He knows what 

 he wants to eat, because he chooses one kind of fpod and 

 rejects the other. He carries with him a concealed coat 

 or armor with which he can cover his body in case of 

 drought or other danger, and which he removes when the 

 water comes back or danger is removed. Where does 

 man show any more mechanical skill or foresight than 

 does this amoeba, the primitive ancestor of man? 



We must not forget what the intellect in man is under- 

 stood to be. Webster defines it as that "Faculty of the 

 human soul or mind which receives or comprehends the 

 ideas communicated to it by the senses." You will notice 

 from this that the intellect is considered to be those 

 groups of cells connected with your sense organs which 

 receive the information and do the thinking. The five 

 senses are the instruments by which the brain cells ob- 

 tain information from the outside world, they have noth- 

 ing to do with the thinking. The cells inside of the man 

 do the thinking, and not the man, just as it is the man 

 inside of the ship or submarine that thinks and directs its 

 actions and not the ship or the submarine. We speak 

 of the ship "Maine" as an individual, doing this or that, 

 forgetting that it is not the ship which performs the var- 

 ious actions, but that it is the men who are inside of the 

 ship. The same is true of the plant catching a fly ; it is 

 not the plant but the cells who are in charge of the plant 

 that capture the fly. 



